Edgard Varèse - The Sound of the Twentieth Century

There is no avant-garde; there's only someone who remains a little behind

Among twentieth-century composers, Edgard Varèse is one of the most divisive and least understood names, even (and perhaps especially) within academic circles. A solitary man, capable of swinging between euphoric highs and barely imaginable depths of depression and pessimism, Varèse was one of those artists able to defy his own era, striving to move beyond the conventions he had absorbed at the Conservatory, and to outrage his contemporaries in order to push past the limits of what was deemed socially acceptable. Relentlessly irreverent, even in his political views, he was a fierce opponent of the concept of the State in an age of rising nationalism.

Whoever feels they belong not to humanity but to a single State is a fool

One of the questions he was most often asked in interviews was whether he believed his compositions could be described as the music of the future. Over the years, he always gave the same answer, stressing that his work was "music of the present," and that the problem lay in the fact that composers and much of the audience were living - unlike him - in the past.

Born in Paris in 1883 to an Italian father and a French mother, Edgard Varèse grew up steeped in European culture. He mixed with Picasso, and was passionate about Claude Debussy, Arnold Schönberg and Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (he attended the early performances of "Pierrot Lunaire" and "The Rite of Spring," the latter in particular shaping his entire career). In Paris, while still a student, he became friends with Debussy, who encouraged him in every possible way to continue on his path, even in the face of early difficulties.

You have the right to compose whatever you want in whatever way you want, as long as the music you produce is truly your own

(Claude Debussy)

Debussy's famous line "Rules do not create works of art" became the utopian dream at the heart of his artistic life. In 1907 he moved to Berlin, where he met Ferruccio Busoni, who captivated him with his radical drive for innovation.

Busoni confirmed my ideas, helped me refine them, and encouraged me to put them into practice; being a brilliant conversationalist as well as a brilliant thinker, he had the gift of pushing my spirit toward depths of prophetic imagination

Clearly fascinated by the grandeur and ferment of the new cultural developments in the first half of twentieth-century Europe, he nonetheless felt hemmed in by the old continent, where classical music was still deeply bound to tradition. He therefore decided to leave behind the culture that had shaped him and move to the United States, a land where classical music was far less academic and historicized - a kind of virgin territory where he could express himself with total freedom.

America is harsh, and that's a good thing. Anyone who is strong and sensitive here is subjected to constant trauma, because in this primitive, brutal country, everything is new, without nuance, utterly intense

What prevailed in Varèse, then, was the urge to take risks, to avoid repeating what had already been done, to sever every tie with the music of the previous century in order to truly set twentieth-century music in motion. This would become a mission he pursued for the rest of his life, one that soon turned into a series of artistic goals bordering on obsession. To further this aim, in 1921 he founded - together with Carlos Salzedo - the International Composers' Guild, dedicated to spreading twentieth-century music. He also wrote its manifesto, in which he stressed how badly modern composers needed support.

Conductors, many of whom behave like prima donnas thinking only of themselves, will never listen to an unknown, while impresarios, convinced that audiences don't like novelty, will never promote one

New instruments for the twentieth century

One of his recurring concerns was the limitations imposed by traditional instruments and the need — through collaboration between composers and engineers — to create new instruments with far greater potential. This is the origin of his long collaboration with the Soviet engineer Léon Theremin, as they tried to create and perfect new instruments. A partnership that would bring him moments of great excitement as well as deep disappointment, as he came to realize that musicians were using the theremin's sound simply to reproduce the same melodies found in the previous century's string compositions.

He frequented Pierre Schaeffer and his recording studios, but he would only become genuinely interested in musique concrète towards the end of his career, starting with “Déserts”. He was, of course, fascinated by the first stirrings of electronic music, and above all by the possibility of amplifying sound, which led him to believe that the classical orchestra was destined to be replaced by an amplified orchestra within a few years. This extremely ambitious idea of creating new sounds and timbres that could not be reproduced on traditional instruments — which he considered no longer fit for purpose — set him apart from neoclassicism, which he criticized at every turn, viewing it as the music of those who live in the past and refuse to accept the changes of modernity.

Irreverence is the true foundation of creative work!

This gave rise to a somewhat unexpected critique of Italian noise artists such as Luigi Russolo, whose music, in Varèse's eyes, lacked any variety of sonic combinations and was therefore too limited. This created yet another necessary break, allowing him to set out — at least initially — on a solitary new path.

The role of the composer and the obstacles he faces

Among contemporary creators, the composer is the only one denied contact with the public. Once his work is finished, he is set aside, and the performer steps in — not to try to understand the composition, but to judge it with impertinence. If he finds no trace of the conventions he is used to, he excludes it from his repertoire, denouncing it as incoherent and incomprehensible

(Manifesto of the International Composers' Guild)

In his writings, Varèse frequently stresses the frustration inherent in the composer's role, which he saw as the only artistic figure deprived both of any contact with the public and of any control over his own work — a work that, the moment it is finished, ends up in the hands of performers, that is, conductors who often interpret it in ways very different from what the author had originally imagined. Nor does he spare the virtuoso instrumentalist, whom he tends to view as a conservative figure, anchored to the past and incapable of engaging with new musical frontiers. Varèse thus dreams of a future for music without virtuosos and without conductors.

Performers and virtuosos shouldn't exist; in the future a machine will take their place, and that will be a good thing

Other enemies of modern composers, in his view, include the laziness of the public, too often set in its habits and unable to understand or appreciate anything that strays from its usual listening, and the arrogance of critics, who in most cases are even more backward-looking and conservative than the public itself ("critics' ignorance is matched only by their bad faith"). In particular, he believed music critics were utterly incapable of grasping just how revolutionary — and, in their own time, how misunderstood — the composers we now call classics (Varèse cites Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as examples) truly were.

Modern music was never melodic. It only became melodic once it stopped being modern

Organized sound: a new music for a new audience

The past doesn't need to be redone. It has already happened, it lives inside us

For Varèse, music therefore had to cut its ties with tradition and academic rules in order to become "organized sound" — a violent sound that strikes the listener and shakes their certainties, that makes them jump out of their seat, that carries them into territory unexplored yet vividly alive and thrilling, that creates timbres never heard before, that is amplified, that goes beyond both the classical tempered system and traditional instruments (strings in particular). For Varèse, organized sound had to categorically avoid the pursuit of an easily memorable melody ("As soon as melody takes over, music becomes soporific"), as well as the kind of repetition that makes a work predictable ("In my music you won't find the repetitions of jazz, or the thematic developments of Beethoven's music, which amount to the same thing"), or a story to be told ("Music is neither a story nor a picture", "Music is the most abstract of the arts"). To create this "organized sound", another break with the past was necessary: relegating the strings to an increasingly marginal role, and bringing to the fore the brass and, above all, the percussion — the true scandal at the heart of the French composer's works.

Percussion instruments don't know how to tell a story. They have a vivid, immediate quality that no other instrument possesses

To heighten these elements of modernity, in short, music must draw on the sounds coming from the new world that is emerging, using unprecedented instruments never before employed in the orchestra.

I have always regarded the industrial world as a source of truly beautiful sounds, an unexplored mine of music in embryo

Varèse believes that a new audience for new music already exists and can be reached. He saw it clearly in some of his performances and imagines it as divided into two categories. On one side, a progressive elite open to change, always on the lookout for new cultural experiences ranging from music to the visual arts (he calls it a cultured aristocracy); on the other, a minority segment of the general public, one whose mind has not yet been clouded by the endless false truths of pseudo-knowledge. Varèse gives no chance at all to the bourgeois listener who picked up a few notions in his youth, because he immediately understands that such a mind already has a preformed opinion that's hard to dislodge, with no interest in moving away from its own certainties: this is an audience that only enjoys a concert if it offers back what it already knows, much like most critics do. So if new music already exists, however obstructed at every turn, it could still find its own audience, provided that audience had the chance to follow it with a certain regularity.

If we want modern music to be recognized for its worth and to have its own dignity, we should stop talking about it and start playing it

Major works

• Amériques (1918-1921), the music of the new century

Before moving to the United States, Varèse destroyed all his early works, considering them utterly unsuited to his new vision of music. The only piece to survive is Un Grand Sommeil Noir from 1906, a youthful composition far removed from the sound that would later make him recognizable.

His first significant work is undoubtedly Amériques, written between 1918 and 1922, a monumental composition requiring a huge orchestra of at least 150 musicians made up — besides the usual strings and brass — of xylophone, sleigh bells, glockenspiel, sirens, whips, ratchets, celesta, crow calls, tambourine, gong, castanets, wind machines (heliophones), harp, clapper, string drum, and boat whistles. A truly incredible arsenal for an orchestra. The title might suggest a portrait of the American continent, but Varèse always denied that his titles were meant to depict anything; in fact, he made clear they were chosen almost at random once the writing was finished, meant to evoke a feeling rather than suggest a story.

I admit the starting point may be an image or an idea, but it then gradually disappears as the work takes shape

Amériques fully embodies the spirit of the era in which it was written — it is absolutely the music of the present, at a time when Varèse's contemporaries were still anchored to the music of the past. For Varèse, percussion is the symbol of modernity and of the new, frenetic, ever-changing life of the United States. He deliberately avoids any kind of melody to focus instead on dissonance and the search for unusual timbres, on unexpected and innovative sounds, from sirens to a whip, from the wind machine to sleigh bells, down to a particular percussion instrument called the "lion's roar". The few opening flute notes, almost a melody, are simply a device to make the piece recognizable. Those few seconds quickly dissolve, only to resurface regularly throughout the following twenty-five minutes, as if marking out the work's various sections.

Within it lies the violence of a new sonic world, capable of reaching volumes that were almost unimaginable at the time. As Varèse himself told us, there are never any repetitions, and the listener has no way of predicting what will happen in the following minutes, aside from the flute notes that periodically resurface from the chaos. Everything is unpredictable and thrilling, especially when the percussion takes over and when the sirens forge a strong link with the sound of modern society, the composer's great obsession. These twenty visionary minutes contain all the insights that would run through Varèse's future works, which (with due differences) would always represent a continuous evolution of the ideas found in Amériques (even when he turned to electronic and musique concrète).

The work's premiere took place in 1926 in Philadelphia under the direction of Leopold Stokowski, and it was well received.

• Offrandes (1921), Hyperprism (1923), Octandre (1923), Intégrales (1924-1925) 

After Amériques, Varèse wrote a series of shorter works before returning to the large orchestra with Arcana. Offrandes (1921) is a minor piece lasting about seven minutes, divided into two parts for chamber orchestra and soprano. Hyperprism is a brief composition (around three minutes) to be performed by an 18-piece orchestra, preceding a series of works (Intégrales, Ionisation, Density 21.5) whose titles suggest ties to the world of science.

A dissonant, discordant work, clearly anti-melodic and decidedly avant-garde, Hyperprism centers on percussion and on winds and woodwinds layered over one another, almost reinforcing each other. The sound of the sirens creates a link with Amériques, though this is in fact a far more abstract piece. At its premiere in 1923 in New York (conducted by Varèse), a fight very nearly broke out among the audience, with one part hissing and shouting and another applauding. At one point those applauding began booing those who were protesting, and some even came to blows. The composer Carlos Salzedo, who was in the audience, had to step in to calm things down.

Octandre (1923) is a chamber piece in three movements, each lasting barely two minutes.

A very different impression is made by Intégrales (1924–1925), a composition that picks up the technique of Hyperprism but pushes further in complexity and length (ten minutes). A work of radical rupture with traditional classical music, Intégrales is surprising for its sheer rigor. Amid its constant distance from any form of harmony and its total lack of predictability, brief melodic fragments occasionally surface, only to be immediately swallowed by dissonance.

• Arcana (1925–1927), the return to the large orchestra

Arcana is yet another highly evocative title chosen by Edgard Varèse, this time for his second composition for large orchestra after Amériques. Composed between 1925 and 1927, Arcana seemingly conjures esoteric, alchemical worlds (the name is inspired by the writings of Paracelsus), but it is actually his most colorful and vivacious symphony.

Non ho mai scritto una musica tanto solida, gioiosa, piena di forza, di vita e di sole

Even though the title evokes particular scenarios, Varèse's music should never be understood as "descriptive." It is always pure sound that doesn't aim to tell a story, but rather to inspire the vaguest possible sensations. Here that evocative power becomes pure sonic pleasure, reaching truly unusual heights, helped along by a genuinely enormous orchestra (around one hundred and forty musicians). The hallmarks are the same as in his previous compositions (the absence of melody and repetition, the massive use of percussion and brass), but Arcana heightens the cinematic quality already present in Amériques. Short melodic fragments surface from the magma and vanish quickly, but they're still far more noticeable than in his earlier works.

• Ionisation (1931), the realm of percussion

Among his shorter works, the most revolutionary is certainly Ionisation, for thirteen musicians playing around fifty percussion instruments — the first classical composition for an orchestra made up entirely of percussionists, plus the inevitable siren. Up to that point percussion had always been used as background color, a marginal addition, never conceived as an autonomous instrument capable of carrying an entire classical composition on its own. Varèse radically overturns this paradigm, once again throwing audiences off balance. The spatial dimension is essential to achieving the sonic effects the composer was after: each percussionist has to be positioned at a specific point within the orchestra, forming a precise double semicircle around the conductor.

An extremely irreverent work of overlapping polyrhythms and the widest possible range of timbral effects — thanks to the sheer number of different percussion instruments involved — Ionisation stands as one of the watershed moments of 20th-century music. And yet, for all its undeniable historical significance, the piece didn't come out of nowhere: it's clearly an evolution that pushes to its furthest extreme the radical idea of change already set out in Amériques. These sounds were, in a sense, already in the air — Varèse's achievement was to grasp them before anyone else and claim them as his own, with courage and sheer stubbornness.

Its 1933 New York premiere was a success, and Ionisation was performed again many times, both in the United States and in Europe. Frank Zappa recounted not only that he decided to become a musician after hearing this work, but that he used to play it for all his friends to gauge, by their reactions, just how smart they were. Chances are not many of them passed the test.

The Abyss of Depression

Ecuatorial (1932–1934) is a transitional composition featuring a male lyric voice, almost an evolution of Offrandes. Two things make it significant nonetheless: the use of piano (a first for Varèse) and, above all, the first use of the Ondes Martenot, an early electronic synthesizer invented by Maurice Martenot with the help of Leon Theremin, which surfaces at various points to conjure up an entirely new sound world.

This marks the end of the composer's most vital phase — he was never especially prolific to begin with. Aside from the brief Density 21.5 (1936), an atonal piece conceived to be played on a platinum flute, fifteen years pass between Ecuatorial and the later Déserts, years in which Varèse plunges into the abyss of depression and vanishes from the scene.

Financial troubles, the feeling of never being truly understood by his contemporaries or by academics — who regarded him as little more than an eccentric idealist — and, more generally, a growing conviction that his innovative drive was destined to be swallowed up by the oblivion of time, all led him to abandon music for a while.

The main cause of his depression, however, is to be found in the rejections he received whenever he sought funding for various research projects aimed at creating new electronic instruments. He also tried to convince the major film studios to use his "organized sound" as a film score, but here too his hopes were constantly frustrated. This seems bizarre in hindsight, since Varèse's music clearly has a cinematic quality, and it's precisely film composers who went on to plunder it extensively, especially from the second half of the 1960s onward (for instance, Jerry Goldsmith draws on distinctly Varèse-like sonorities in 1968's "The Planet Of The Apes"). All of this drove him to withdraw into himself: in his darkest moments, he even entertained self-destructive thoughts. He started asking various doctors how one might, hypothetically, die without suffering, until he eventually worked up the nerve to seriously ask his own doctor to procure him a drug that would let him go painlessly.

During these years, although unable to compose, he devoted himself to teaching. In 1948 he taught composition at Columbia University, and in 1950 he taught at the famous Darmstadt school (his students there included Luigi Nono and Bruno Maderna). It was right after his time teaching at Darmstadt that he began to recover somewhat and started writing Déserts, which called for the use of magnetic tape. These were the years he spent time at Pierre Schaeffer's studio — the pioneer of musique concrète — who offered him a number of new ideas that proved useful both for finishing Déserts and for conceiving the later Poème électronique For Electronic Tape.

• Déserts (1950–1954), the master's return

Déserts unfortunately stands as Varèse's last great composition, closing the circle on the trilogy of works for large orchestra that began with Amériques and Arcana. This time he draws on everything he'd learned about electronic music during those years in Paris with Pierre Schaeffer, whose influence is especially tangible. The French composer reaches an experimental peak here, managing to write a positively futuristic symphony, divided into four movements, halfway between orchestral, electronic and musique concrète. It's his most extreme and coherent work, his most authentic — and, precisely for that reason, his most complex. The third section in particular, built from recordings of industrial noise, brushes up against truly visionary heights.

Deserts describes not only physical deserts of sand, sea, mountains and snow, outer space, deserted city streets, but also that distant inner space where man is alone in a world of essential mystery and solitude

The premiere was held in Paris on December 2, 1954, conducted by Hermann Scherchen, with Pierre Henry in charge of playing back the magnetic tapes. Déserts was performed alongside works by Mozart and Tchaikovsky, in front of an audience that, as Varèse would later put it, only wanted to hear what it already knew. The reception was therefore disastrous, both from the audience and the critics. The only one to offer his compliments was the now elderly Igor Stravinsky, who had so greatly influenced Varèse's artistic life since the 1920s.

Edgard Varèse and Frank Zappa

Deeply disappointed, Varèse returned to New York in 1955, the year of the strangest and most amusing anecdote of his life. An unknown teenager, Frank Zappa, on his birthday, asked his mother for the money to make a long-distance call to the man who was then his idol. His mother gave in, but it was Varèse's wife who answered the phone, kindly informing him that her husband was in Europe and would be back in a few weeks.

His wife answered. She was very kind and told me he was in Europe and to call back in a few weeks. I did. I don't remember exactly what I said to him, but it was something like: 'I really like your music'

Frank Zappa

Not content with that, a year later Frank Zappa decided to write Varèse a long letter that begins like this: “Dear Sir, you may remember me and my stupid phone call last January; if not, my name is Frank Zappa Jr and I am 16 years old. The reason for my letter is that I am visiting relatives in Baltimore, and while I am on the East Coast I hope to be able to see you”.

Varèse replied politely.

Dear Mr. Zappa, I am sorry I cannot fulfill your request. I am leaving for Europe next week and will be away until next spring. I do hope to see you upon my return, however. With my very best wishes. Kind regards. Edgard Varèse.

It's nice to imagine that the young Zappa's naivety and sincerity managed to bring a smile to the elderly Varèse's face at such a difficult moment in his life.

• Poème électronique For Electronic Tape (1957–1958)

Varèse's career was by then nearly over, but in 1957 he returned to Europe to work at the Philips laboratories in Eindhoven and write an electronic composition meant to provide the sound for Le Corbusier's pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. This gave rise to Poème électronique For Electronic Tape, his first entirely electronic work. Listening to it today, these eight minutes might not seem all that remarkable, but considering the year it was made, it's easy to grasp Varèse's unmatched ability to capture the sounds of the present. The tolling chimes of the opening seconds could today even be described as dark-ambient, while the piece's later development combines the French composer's familiar ideas, still using (recorded) percussion to underpin and heighten the effect of the electronic music. The chimes recur after two minutes, creating a connecting thread running through an extremely experimental piece that can be considered one of the most pioneering works of electronic and musique concrète.

The final years

Around the early 1960s, a rediscovery of Edgard Varèse began, thanks in particular to the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who performed and recorded all of his orchestral compositions. Those recordings are still available today. Varèse wrote nothing more, and on November 5, 1965, he passed away at the age of 81. What remains of him are only unfinished works, some of which (Tuning Up, Dance For Burgess and Nocturnal) were completed by his student Chou Wen-chung. Missing, however, is Espace, which was meant to be his final large-scale orchestral composition. But that, unfortunately, is a story we will never be able to tell.

Bibliography

• Il suono organizzato. Scritti sulla musica. Edgard Varése (1970, Ricordi)
• Il resto è rumore. Ascoltando il XX secolo. Alex Ross (2011, Bompiani)
• Senti questo. Alex Ross (2011, Bompiani)
• Il suono veloce. Futurismo e futurismi in musica. Daniele Lombardi (1976, Ricordi)
• Musica e cinema nel dopoguerra americano. Cristina Cano e Emiliano Battistini (2015, Gremese)
• Stockhausen. Interview sul genio musicale (1985, Laterza)
• Frank Zappa. L'autobiografia (Arcana, 2017)
• La musica sperimentale. Michael Nyman (2010, Shake)
• La musica degli Stati Uniti. Charles Hamm (1990, Ricordi)
• Storia della musica. La nascita del Novecento. Guido Salvetti (2013, EDT)
• Storia della musica. Il secondo Novecento. Andrea Lanza (2014, EDT)

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